Convictions of the Soul

Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement

Sharon Erickson Nepstad

Convictions of the Soul

Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement

Sharon Erickson Nepstad

Description

Many U.S. Christians were profoundly moved by the liberation struggles in Central America in the 1980s. Most learned about the situation from missionaries who had worked in the area and witnessed the repression firsthand. These missionaries, Sharon Erickson Nepstad shows, employed the institutional and cultural resources of Christianity to seize the attention of American congregations and remind them of the moral obligations of their faith. Drawing on archival data and in-depth interviews with activists in ten separate solidarity organizations around the country, Nepstad offers a rich analysis of the experiences of religious leaders and church members in the solidarity movement. She explores the moral meaning of protest and the ways in which clergy used religious rituals, martyr stories, and biblical teachings to establish a link between faith and activism. She looks at the factors that transformed missionaries into skilled leaders who were able to translate the Central American conflicts into Christian themes and a religious language familiar to U.S. congregations. She also offers insights into the unique challenges of organizing on the transnational level and shows how the solidarity movement made U.S. policy towards Central America one of the most hotly contested issues in American politics during the 1980s. Unpacking the implications of her study for the field of collective action, Nepstad stresses the importance of the individual human agents who shape, and are shaped by, the structures and cultures in which they operate. She argues that working in and through the church gave supporters of solidarity moral credibility as well as a rich source of symbolic, human, and material resources that enabled them to reach across national boarders, motivating others to act upon their deeply held moral convictions. Shedding new light on the genesis and evolution of this important activist movement, Convictions of the Soul will be of interest to students and scholars of social movements, religion, and politics.

Convictions of the Soul

Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement

Sharon Erickson Nepstad

Author Information

Sharon Erickson Nepstad is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duquesne University, where she also teaches peace studies and conflict resolution at the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy.

Convictions of the Soul

Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement

Sharon Erickson Nepstad

Reviews and Awards

"Sharon Erickson Nepstad ranges from Central American history to North American politics, and from macro political economy to a close look at personal narratives, to trace the meanings, passions, and convictions that led people into opposition of U.S. Central American policy." --Rhys H. Williams, editor of Culture Wars in American Politics: Critical Reviews of a Popular Myth

"In this book you hear and see real people making choices, feeling emotions, trying to make sense of the world, and pursuing their goals. The movement for peace in Central America in the 1980s was heroic, battling an arrogant U.S. administration bent on harebrained intervention--an all-too-frequent pattern in American history. In addition to the importance of its subject, Convictions of the Soul nicely captures themes that are at the forefront of studies of protest, especially emotions and agency."--James M. Jasper, author of The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements